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Manage Yammer user licenses in Office 365

11/7/2018

6 minutes to read

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In this article

When you assign user licenses as part of a bundled Office 365 subscription plan such as Office 365 Enterprise E3, the Yammer license is automatically assigned to the user. You can remove or assign Yammer licenses for specific users in the Office 365 admin center or by using Windows PowerShell cmdlets for Office 365.

The following example returns information about any users who are not currently licensed for Office 365.

Get-MsolUser -All -UnlicensedUsersOnly

Start blocking users who don't have Yammer licenses

It takes just a few steps to start blocking Office 365 users who don't have Yammer licenses. However, turning this setting on can accidentally disrupt users' access to Yammer. So before you begin, do the following to make sure your Yammer users can continue working smoothly:

Make sure that you have turned on the setting to enforce Office 365 identity for Yammer users. You can assign or unassign Yammer licenses only to Yammer users who are managed in Office 365. So, to block Office 365 users without Yammer licenses, it is required that all Yammer users are managed in Office 365. The setting Block Office 365 users without Yammer licenses can be turned on only when the Enforce office 365 identity for Yammer users setting is turned on.

Make sure all current Yammer users have a Yammer license. When you start blocking Office 365 users without Yammer licenses, any user without a Yammer license will be unable to access Yammer. So before you begin, make sure that all of your current Yammer users have Yammer licenses. One method to check this is to go to the Export Users page in Yammer and export all users. Then compare that list to the list of users in Office 365 and make any changes required. For more details, see the article How to audit Yammer users in networks connected to Office 365.

Tell your users about this change. We strongly recommend that you tell users that you are starting to block Office 365 users without Yammer licenses, because it can disrupt their day to day usage of Yammer.

You must be a global administrator on Office 365 who was synchronized to Yammer as a verified admin to perform these steps.

If you are ready to block users who don't have Yammer licenses, follow these steps.

In Yammer, go to the Network Admin section, and choose Security Settings.

In the Security Settings page, go to the Enforce Office 365 Identity section, select the Enforce Office 365 identity in Yammer checkbox and confirm the selection. Enforcing Office 365 identity is a pre-requisite step to block users without Yammer licenses.

After the Enforce Office 365 identity in Yammer checkbox is selected, the Block Office 365 users without Yammer licenses checkbox will be available. Select the Block Office 365 users without Yammer licenses checkbox and then choose Save.

You see a confirmation message that asks if you are ready to start blocking Office 365 users without Yammer licenses.

If you want, you can automatically log out all current users, so that you can be sure that everyone using the Yammer service has logged in with their Office 365 identities and have a Yammer license. If you choose to do this, select the Log out all current users checkbox. We strongly recommend doing this at a time of minimal user activity (because users might be logged out in the middle of their work) and communicate it to them ahead of time.

If you are ready to start blocking Office 365 users without Yammer licenses, select Yes, I am ready to confirm your choice. This returns you to the Security Settings page where the Block Office 365 users without Yammer licenses checkbox is now selected.

Choose Save to save all your settings on the page.

If you don't choose Save but instead navigate away from the page, your settings will not take effect.

FAQ

Q: Why are Yammer licenses per-user?

A: Per-user licenses let you assign Yammer to a subset of users in your company - typically for a geographical or team-by-team rollout. Only users with a license can see the Yammer tile in the Office 365 app launcher.

Q: How does this affect Yammer users who sign-in with their email and password?

A: Licenses are enforced only for users who sign-in with Office 365 identity.

Q: What if I do not want anyone in my company to use legacy Yammer identity?